'Fearful of his base' Trump is painting himself into corner: MSNBC panel

MSNBC's "Morning Joe," co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Jonathan Lemire agreed Tuesday that Donald Trump often makes decisions that are detrimental to himself personally and to his agenda because he fears criticism from his base.

With Scarborough pointing out that the president-elect might be able to get together with Democratic leaders and reach a compromise on some policies that would forestall delaying tactics and battles, he suggested the blustery Trump is fond of floating trial balloons before retreating back due to fears of MAGA outrage.

"What's so fascinating, Jonathan, I know you covered him and you and Jeff [Mason of Reuters] agree on this, he talks about compromise and pulls back," Scarborough prompted his co-host.

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"For somebody who controls his base as much as he does, he's awfully fearful of it," he added. "He will not talk about Operation Warp Speed, again we talked about around this table perhaps one of the great achievements scientifically over the past 50 years. Won't talk about that because he did one time with Bill O'Reilly and he got booed."

Warp Speed was the name given to the roll-out of vaccinations during the COVID pandemic.

"So, I'm wondering, is there any reason to believe that he's going to move — that he's not going to be as constrained by his base this time or is it going to be more of the same?" he asked.

"More of the same," Lemire agreed. "You're right about Operation Warp Speed. I was talking to someone else about this a few days ago, that should be his first room in his presidential library, that accomplishment. They did it in 10 months and distributed during a global pandemic. But this is someone who, when given the choice between being a unifier or divider, almost always chosen division."

He later added, "We have reporting that Trump was waffling about whether he wanted to put [Kash] Patel up for FBI director job because they didn't think he would be confirmed. There was thought given him a lesser job he could get through, but then Steve Bannon, and others said, 'No, you need to put him at the top of the FBI,' and that's what he's going with.

"There are moments when he still, despite never running for election again, he seems fearful of alienating the base too much."

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